I recently bought the DVD Collectors Edition in order to play the games again, I consider them to be among the most beautiful and intellectually satisfying games of this genre ever created.

They install and run fine on my XP SP3 PC, and with my advanced Galaxy nVidia video card and a 24" Dell flat screen, look just awesome.

However, I have run into the cuckoo egg freeze but in Syberia I.

It is obvious the patches MUST be applied to continue.

However, after downloading the three I patches from Gamespot, the first one thinks it installed, but 2 and 3 give error message that Syberia is not installed.

The patch for Syberia II produces the same error, it says game is not installed.

Obviously, I cannot play the game without installing the patches. How could a DVD collection be issued, and no provision made for installing the known required patches? Without which, it is impossible to play the game??

I have wondered if it is possible that the patches are assuming a specific hard coded default install path, i.e. they are looking for it rather than a registry entry. If I knew what the default install path of the original game(s) was, I could copy all the files there, see if the patches would install, then copy them back.

It seems pretty obvious the patches are not finding the installed DVD games. And on my PC, I install all games into a C:\Games\ folder in addition, not into the C:\Program Files\ folder.

I have seen other posts on this forum of others running into this, however, I have not seen a solution. I note where some have apparently made save games available, but that is not a real solution to the fact that the patches apparently cannot be installed to the DVD edition as it installs both games into a folder "Syberia DVD", .

I kept Googling, finally found a post with a hint that appears to have worked, I just ran all three patches for Syberia I, and the single patch for Syberia II, and this time they reported they installed successfully.

You must edit the registry. The following is on XP SP2 install, if you are on Win 7 or Vista, you mileage may vary for the entire key path.

regedit

HKey_Local_Machine/Software/Microids/Syberia DVD

You will see in the Syberia DVD key a "CurrentPath" value.

At that same level, create a new key named "Syberia". For that key, add a "string value", and in that value, put the entire path to the Syberia I game. For instance, on my PC, the install path for the DVD is:

C:\Games\Syberia DVD

so for the Syberia key you just added, enter the string:

C:\Games\Syberia DVD\Syberia

Now for Syberia II, create another key at the same level parallel with the Syberia DVD key, and name the key "Syberia2".

Now add a string value, and enter the path to Syberia2, as e.g. follows on my PC:

C:\Games\Syberia DVD\Syberia2

After I did this, I was able to run all of the patches. I am about to try the game again and hope this solved the cuckoo egg freeze problem.

After installing the patches as described in previous posts to I & II Collectors Edition, the following occurred.

1. At first, launching from the shortcut for the combined DVD install still worked.

2. The game had become unstable, and immediately started crashing, with screen going blank, while music still played. Had to use task manager to end first the game task, then the DVD launch task.

3. Game will not launch if you use dxdiag.exe to turn off hardware video acceleration. But I did turn off sound hardware acceleration on the sound tab.

4. Worse yet, at this point, the shortcut for starting the DVD launch front end simply quit working, it could not load. I wondered if the registry keys added for applying patches was the problem, so I renamed them so they would not interfere. Did not help. So I put a shortcut directly to the Syberia.exe file on the desktop. That solved that, game would now launch and play.

5. Still got random crashes, screen going black, game locking up. One so bad had to reset the computer.

6. On the shortcut for launching the Syberia.exe file, set Compatibility Mode to Win98/ME. Now I could launch.

7. Oops. After starting in compatibility more, it is obvious it is working, because my Saved Games disappeared. Solution: Just copy them from the XP "My Documents\Syberia Saves" folder into the "C:\Games\Syberia DVD\Syberia\Syberia Saves" folder.

8. Restarted game again. Loaded last save. Now, at least for past 15 minutes, games seems stable. You can tell the video has been affected by compatibility mode, the tones and hues are quite a bit darker, but it is still perfectly acceptable.

Most importantly, and I say this with fingers on both hands crossed, maybe it will play with stability now.

Hi, after googling the very same problem I stumbled on your account of (almost) the same situation. But I need some help. I run the game under Vista, it's a version of the game I have downloaded, so no DVD. The game freezes at the point where I'm in Anna Vorarlbergs office and want to insert the voice recording into the player. I've tried installing the patches and get the same error message "Syberia is not installed". I've tried entering the registry to address the problem as you suggested, but under Vista I can't seem to get into the registry! All I get is a window with the registry files, now what am I supposed to do with that?! I'm no computer whizz so pleae help, I want to play the game although I have NO idea if installing the patches will solve the freeze. It shouldn't be this difficult to play a game!! Thanks...